Guildford,
Surrey
Click on photos to enlarge
Notes in italics from Surrey by Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner,
Revised by Bridget Cherry (1971)
Yale University Press, New Haven
and London. |
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Modern
ascendant |
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1683. Guildhall, High Street.
Superb, the epitome of Restoration panache, refronted in 1683 in a
completely original version of what were originally mid-C17 Artisan
motifs. The effect is more like the carved poop of a C17 ship than
anything else. ... Three bays, projecting pilastered first floor with big
windows between under alternating segmental and triangular pediments -
what is, effectively, an all glass front - with much narrower windows on
the returned sides with their own squashed pediments. In front an iron
balcony, the whole thing oversailing the ground floor on caryatid
brackets; above, a trapezoidal pediment with an octagonal cupola on the
very edge - completely wrong by academic standards, completely right in
the particular circumstances. From the centre of the pediment projects the
magnificent clock, dated 1683 and possibly made by John Aylward, supported
on one gilded beam and five splendidly ornamented iron ties. The clock is
pedimented and has thick floral decorations at the sides - i.e. it is in
pure City of London style ... |
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1660. Child (now Guildford)
House of 1660, the best of the very individual late C17 Guildford houses.
Three bays and three storeys, the upper storeys with pilasters and big
windows filling almost the whole wall area between them. Ground-floor
doorcase contemporary (with a C18 bow-fronted shop window added on each
side), and very typical of City of London carpenters' work of a few years
either side of 1660. Central doorcase with scrolled volutes at the sides
... shop-windows with carved panels of luxuriant whorled foliage and
flowers underneath. ... |
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1619-22. Abbot's Hospital.
Built in 1619-22 by George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, originally for
twelve men and eight women, a visible proof of the fairy-tale story of a
local family that made good. ... Abbot's Hospital is one of those
buildings which carry out a standard style extremely well, in this case
the standard official Jacobean style ... There is no hint here of Inigo
Jones, and in fact the main feature, the huge gatehouse, is a deliberate
anachronism looking back at least to Hampton Court and possibly to the
semi-military gatehouses of the C15. Outside the universities, this is the
last great gatehouse in the country and very nearly the best. Three
storeys, with four big corner turrets and ogee caps, the street front made
into a half-H with two wings with shaped gables, the other side
forming a closed three-storey brick quadrangle. In itself this is not a
remarkable recipe, and Abbot's Hospital succeeds in its purely
architectural qualities, something very rare indeed in Jacobean
architecture. The effect is chiefly the meticulous relation of gatehouse
to wings and gatehouse to quad which combine with the tall proportions and
intensely red brick to give an extraordinary effect of homogeneity. ...
Simple three-, four-, and five-light mullioned windows, mostly without
hood-moulds, and occasional Jacobean set-pieces such as the entrance door
in the gatehouse (the arms above date from 1825) with a full-scale
entablature carried on paired pilasters carrying a diamond rustication.
... |
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